The band headed to Maison Rouge studio in South London in August 1993 and recorded the new material with urgency. By 1993 the band’s label Food was ready to drop them if their outlay was not returned with some solid gold hits.Īlbarn began writing new material furiously, finding inspiration in the minutiae of British life happening around him and also vitally in the comedy, pathos and small dramas of Martin Amis’s novel London Fields. The band had released their debut, ‘Leisure’, in 1991 but failed to make any real impact, and their much-underrated follow-up ‘Modern Life Is Rubbish’ was similarly overlooked. However, it almost never came to pass at all. It was almost inevitable that a quintessentially British album such as ‘Parklife’ should lead the way. As Kurt Cobain said in the very first lines of Nirvana’s final album ‘In Utero’, “Teenage angst has paid off well, now I’m bored and old.” The stage was set for a distinctly different sound to emerge to pre-eminence and offer something fresh. Musically, the slaughter of the fattened calf that was the American rock scene was imminent. This was once more a vibrant young country in search of a good time. Being British was something to be celebrated once more. By 1994, change was in the air: Tony Blair was the country’s great hope, and suddenly it seemed like there was the anticipation of a brighter future. This was reflected in the best of the nation’s musical output: undoubtedly inventive and groundbreaking at its finest, but dominated by a darkness and ponderousness that kept much of it confined to the peripheries of popular consciousness. Fifteen years of Tory rule had left much of the creative community in the UK isolated, introspective and downright depressed. The release of ‘Parklife’ in 1994 was something akin to a seismic shift in perception and attitude within the British music industry that had been a long time coming.
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